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Ethics involves the study of standards relating to right and wrong. It is about what we “ought” to do in any situation in which our values may be tested. Service, as it us used here, is short for “service-learning.” Service-learning involves knowledge and values as they are put into action on behalf of others. Students who participate in service-learning projects learn how to direct their considerable energies towards solving real, meaningful community issues. Together, ethics and service-learning provide a powerful combination of tools for thinking, acting, and reflecting.

Ethics & Service is designed to help you maximize the effectiveness of your teaching by combining the values and service messages into one sequential process. This first edition of Ethics & Service has been organized into a series of 12 basic lesson plans, with a teacher’s guide preceding them and an assessment section following them.

Lesson by Lesson

Lesson 1: Stories from the Field

The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to the meaning of service-learning. Students will learn that service-learning involves selecting a meaningful project, preparing for the project, dealing with challenges, and reflecting on outcomes.

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Lesson 2: My Community: What Does it Look Like?

What does it look like? Before embarking on a service-learning project, students will need to develop a better understanding of their community. What does a community look like physically? How well do people get along? What important problems need to be addressed?

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Lesson 3: Ethics in My Community: Now and in the 21st Century

What is our community’s “ethical barometer” doing–is it rising or falling? That is, ethically speaking, are things getting better or are they getting worse, and why? What do we–as citizens–need to do about it?

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Lesson 4: Selecting a Service-Learning Project

Using ideas generated in the previous lesson, students will apply a series of questions to determine which community problem to address and how to address it.

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Lesson 5: My Community: What Are Its Values?

Before embarking on a community project, students will explore the nature of ethical values and will work to create their own list of agreed-to values.

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Lesson 6: Applying Our Code

In this step, students will operationalize the list of values agreed to in the previous lesson. Their purpose is to create behavioral standards to be followed during implementation of their projects.

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Lesson 7: Preparing for Challenges

Preparation for service is one very important part of the service-learning cycle, so students will want to practice responding to various challenges that may arise during their community work. Numerous examples are included.

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Lesson 8: Right versus Wrong: Knowing the Difference

By now, student projects should be well underway. As their projects are developing, this lesson and the next several lessons will provide students with additional tools to reflect on and respond to situations that may arise. In this lesson, we suggest four tests to distinguish right from wrong.

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Lesson 9: Analyzing Ethical Dilemmas

The most difficult ethical dilemmas occur when two of our core ethical values come into conflict. We call these right-versus-right dilemmas. This lesson offers a step-by-step process for approaching these dilemmas, along with four paradigms for analyzing them. Numerous service-learning examples are included.

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Lesson 10: Resolving Ethical Dilemmas

Resolution is the second step in dealing with dilemmas. Here, three decision principles are explained.

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Lesson 11: Moral Courage

Values without the possibility of action are meaningless, and sometimes personal courage is required in order to do what we know is right. In this lesson, students explore the concept of moral courage.

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Lesson 12: Final Reflections

Reflection is core to both service-learning and ethical decision making. In this lesson, students create a final plan for reflection to summarize and consolidate their learning.

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